A Canticle for Birth: Part I

Part I: E Unum Pluribus

Shnick! blook! 

The chords of my death. I turn to see her. She twists in a snarl and snicks the vines with her blade. 

Shk shk! The thorny nest shrivels away even as the pieces piercing Ves's calf tighten around her leg. 

"No… please! I swear, I won't... Just please… please!" She shrieks half naked as she falls to a knee. I catch her before she crashes to the bare stone. 

"I have you!" I gasp.

"Just like you had Rex?" The vindictive mouth on her forearm hisses between sneering teeth. 

Whole and human we were once. Now twisted and different, she more than me.

"Shut the fuck up!" She desperately garbles as she slaps her forearm. As she does the teeth snap at her fingers. 

"You know he's right." The eyeball on the back of her head resonates through the glade.

"Please!" She burst into tears

A rustling crowd of whispers floods my eardrums as a breeze glides the sounds of clicking insectoid limbs and the fluttering of bird wings. I drop her as I feel a squeeze in my heart. 

"He's going to fail!" My own neck eyeball resonates. She sobs and curls up. 

The dark fog invades around us and we welcome it. I summon my will and batter against it.

"Why are you here?" The neckball whines with a tear, and my will implodes. 

I relent and collapse, weeping as I do. I pull her close. 

"Go ahead, hold me." The rigid bumps on her back pull me with a laughing and eager tickling quality.

No! I couldn't. She moans as I struggle. Fingers guide, I've handled the bones of the long dead before it's nothing like this gooey thing. I repress the urge to vomit. I pull her close by the spine, then sob as the symphonic fog dances against our sanities.